FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT TOYS - PAGE 4

Wal-Mart Stores is gearing up for a pricing battle in the toy department this holiday season, Chief Executive Bill Simon told Reuters. Still, he does not expect much discounting on "hot electronics" such as the new XBox One by Microsoft and Sony's Playstation 4, he said at the Reuters Global Consumer and Retail Summit in New York. The world's largest retailer has seen "pretty good" presales of both of those gaming systems, Simon said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Walt Disney toys are sold around the world. Now, children can find them in the cloud as well. The media giant is teaming up with toy company JAKKS Pacific and Patrick Soon-Shiong, Los Angeles' wealthiest person, on a new line of toys - with a nifty technological twist designed to link the goodies that kids lug home from the store with Disney's stable of well-known animated characters. "DreamPlay", developed by Soon-Shiong's NantWorks company, and JAKKS works via an app that can be downloaded on Apple Inc devices like the iPad, or smartphones and tablets running Google Inc Android software.

CLEVELAND (Reuters) - A woman caught on an Ohio cemetery surveillance video taking a toy duck off the grave of a 14-month-old boy has been charged with petty theft, police said on Friday. Police in Ontario, Ohio, had tried for nearly two years to capture a clear image of someone who was taking mementos from the boy's grave. They finally got that image on Saturday and posted it to the police Facebook page. Thousands of comments came in on the video showing a woman leaving the gravesite with a stuffed duck that had been placed there just hours before by the toddler's parents.

"You shouldn`t write bad things about toys," said the kid's voice on the phone, referring to last week's column about the opening on a huge new Michigan Ave.toy emporium. "Toys are what kids like so don`t be mean. Weren`t you ever a kid?"

More than 250 toys dating from 1925 to 1955 are on special display at the Museum of Science and Industry, 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive. The toys, part of the museum's Christmas Around the World festival through Jan. 3, are from the collection of Charles Sharp.

California has banned toys containing more than a trace amount of a chemical used to soften plastics that scientists have linked to health problems. The ban on phthalate makes California the first state to impose severe limits on a chemical that is widely used in baby bottles, soft baby books, teething rings, plastic bath ducks and other toys, said Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco), the bill's author.

Residents can share the holiday spirit with less fortunate children by donating toys to the annual Toys for Tots program through Dec. 18. The drive is sponsored by the Marine Corps Reserve and is coordinated by the Marines of Weapons Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines, which is headquartered in Waukegan. Residents can drop off new unwrapped toys at three Lake County Forest Preserve locations: Ryerson Woods, 21950 N. Riverwoods Rd., Deerfield; the general offices, 2000 N. Milwaukee Ave., Libertyville; and the Lake County Museum in the Lakewood Forest Preserve, Illinois Highway 176 and Fairfield Road, Wauconda.

A red Elmo lunchbox and a Fisher-Price phone were among seemingly benign toys that shoppers are being advised to avoid as dangerous by an advocacy group this holiday season. Some toys listed in the Illinois Public Interest Research Group's 24th annual Trouble in Toyland report have too high of a lead content, while others are excessively loud. Still others had overly high levels of dangerous chemicals or small pieces that might become lodged in children's throats. "In spite of the improvements that we have seen over the last year at the federal level and the improvements that we have seen in the last several years in the state of Illinois, (the research group)

Too many choices and too little time to decide? We waded through the aisles to bring you some of the best new toys around. ---------- IT's BETTER TO GIVE A GOOD GIFT THAN A DUMB ONE. WE'LL HAVE GIFT IDEAS NEXT WEEK!!